WEBVTT - Why is reinvention so alluring? 0:00:01.000 --> 0:00:05.040 We have this whole, massive community of people in recovery, 0:00:05.680 --> 0:00:08.840 but most of them are not talking about it. So again, 0:00:08.880 --> 0:00:11.480 it was this combination of like, Oh, there's this thing 0:00:11.920 --> 0:00:15.760 that's connected to me that I'm also interested in exploring 0:00:16.079 --> 0:00:19.279 journalistically intellectually. But then I was like, I'm going to 0:00:19.320 --> 0:00:23.680 write about dogs. I needed a mental health break. 0:00:26.200 --> 0:00:30.720 Welcome to Off the Cup, my anti anxiety antidote. I 0:00:30.720 --> 0:00:35.640 hope you're feeling good, but I hear from so many 0:00:35.720 --> 0:00:38.519 of you that it's hard to feel good when the 0:00:38.520 --> 0:00:41.320 world around us is so scary. 0:00:42.479 --> 0:00:45.320 And believe me, I can totally relate. 0:00:47.159 --> 0:00:49.720 This podcast is always for me at least, and I 0:00:49.760 --> 0:00:53.400 hope for you and attempt to be a break from 0:00:53.640 --> 0:00:57.520 all of the chaos and anxiety and bad news. And 0:00:58.120 --> 0:01:00.080 in attempting to be a break from all that, we 0:01:00.120 --> 0:01:03.160 talk about a lot of things on this podcast with 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:08.319 a lot of incredible and fascinating people. We share their 0:01:08.360 --> 0:01:11.319 funny stories, we talk about career highs and lows. We 0:01:11.360 --> 0:01:14.480 get into mental health, of course, and a thing that 0:01:14.560 --> 0:01:19.160 comes up so so often. I'm noticing, both in telling 0:01:19.160 --> 0:01:23.240 these stories and in our attempts to process or distract 0:01:23.240 --> 0:01:27.840 ourselves from what's going on around us is change. It's 0:01:27.880 --> 0:01:30.480 sort of like the one constant thread through all the 0:01:30.560 --> 0:01:35.000 stories we tell, right, because the change is what makes 0:01:35.000 --> 0:01:38.800 them important and worth telling and worth learning from. 0:01:39.400 --> 0:01:42.440 When we talk to Mark Duplas about. 0:01:42.000 --> 0:01:46.440 His anxiety journey and mine and the way having a 0:01:46.480 --> 0:01:51.200 nervous breakdown changed us and how scary that was and 0:01:51.240 --> 0:01:56.600 how we grieved that loss. When we talked to Ricky 0:01:56.680 --> 0:01:59.720 Lake about everything she survived, including the suicide of her 0:01:59.760 --> 0:02:05.559 husban and two wildfires that destroyed everything she had, and 0:02:05.760 --> 0:02:09.520 surviving that abrupt change in circumstances. When we talk to 0:02:09.560 --> 0:02:13.680 Michael Chickliss about our anxiety over social media and our 0:02:13.760 --> 0:02:17.959 kids and adapting to a changing world and. 0:02:18.080 --> 0:02:20.360 Fearing it rightfully. 0:02:21.200 --> 0:02:23.560 Or when we talk to Stacy Lindsay about turning forty 0:02:23.639 --> 0:02:27.919 right and all that means, particularly for women. Or when 0:02:27.919 --> 0:02:30.280 we talk to Huey Lewis about losing his hearing, or 0:02:30.320 --> 0:02:33.760 Henry Winkler about the jobs that didn't come when Happy 0:02:33.880 --> 0:02:38.160 Days ended, or shep Rose about his ayahuasca healing journey. 0:02:39.120 --> 0:02:41.840 It's all really about change, isn't it, And how we 0:02:41.960 --> 0:02:46.320 navigate those changes, how we seek out change internally and externally. 0:02:47.280 --> 0:02:49.240 The allure of Reinvention. 0:02:51.520 --> 0:02:54.280 Well, today's guest is a brilliant, award winning writer whose 0:02:54.320 --> 0:02:58.079 new book is about all of that. Ben Want Denise 0:02:58.200 --> 0:03:00.720 Lewis is a contributing writer at The New York Times magazine. 0:03:00.720 --> 0:03:05.079 He's written New York Times bestselling books including America Anonymous, 0:03:05.080 --> 0:03:08.680 Eight Addicts in Search of a Life, and Travels with Casey, 0:03:09.240 --> 0:03:14.720 My Journey through Our Dog Crazy Country. He's written for Slate, Detail, Salon, Sports, Illustrated, 0:03:14.800 --> 0:03:18.959 The Advocate, The New Republic, out Spin. He's a professor 0:03:19.000 --> 0:03:22.239 at Emerson College, and his new book is You've Changed 0:03:22.880 --> 0:03:26.040 The Promise and Price of Self Transformation. 0:03:26.760 --> 0:03:28.480 Welcome Ben Wa Denise Lewis. 0:03:28.800 --> 0:03:31.240 Thanks for having me Sie Well, I'm. 0:03:31.120 --> 0:03:34.480 So excited to have you. This is such an important topic. 0:03:34.520 --> 0:03:36.160 And I know you've been working on this book for 0:03:36.160 --> 0:03:38.480 a while now because we first talked about it several 0:03:39.080 --> 0:03:40.040 several years ago. 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:42.200 What then made you. 0:03:42.160 --> 0:03:44.760 Want to tackle this was what was going on in 0:03:44.800 --> 0:03:47.240 the world? Was it what was going on for you personally? 0:03:47.360 --> 0:03:50.000 A combination? Talk about the genesis of this book. 0:03:50.160 --> 0:03:52.120 Yeah, I think it's always a combination with me, even 0:03:52.120 --> 0:03:55.120 if I don't realize it at the time. Consciously, I 0:03:55.160 --> 0:03:58.080 think for me, there were two threads going on. One 0:03:58.280 --> 0:04:03.160 was could I changed myself and in what ways? And 0:04:03.240 --> 0:04:05.240 for me that started a long time ago when I 0:04:05.240 --> 0:04:07.960 wrote a book about addiction, was struggling with my own addiction. 0:04:08.400 --> 0:04:11.440 I was interested in this idea like who gets better 0:04:11.800 --> 0:04:15.360 who doesn't? What's the difference? Like what happens? What's the 0:04:15.400 --> 0:04:18.240 magic formula if there is one? So I was interested 0:04:18.880 --> 0:04:25.880 initially from that. Then a friend of mine, Michael Glatz, 0:04:25.920 --> 0:04:28.560 when we worked together at a magazine for young gay 0:04:28.560 --> 0:04:30.280 men at San Francisco when we were both very young, 0:04:30.320 --> 0:04:34.320 early twenties, he was the proudest gay person I knew, 0:04:35.520 --> 0:04:39.640 very political. We had a lot of differences because I 0:04:39.720 --> 0:04:42.360 mostly he was much more political at the time than 0:04:42.400 --> 0:04:44.799 I was, and much more of a black and white thinker. 0:04:45.640 --> 0:04:47.440 In any event, he was the proudest game and I knew. 0:04:47.600 --> 0:04:50.800 Several years later he decides he's not gay anymore and 0:04:52.080 --> 0:04:56.680 renounced everything that he had previously said, And so that 0:04:56.800 --> 0:05:01.080 really got me thinking about change, identity change. So he 0:05:01.120 --> 0:05:06.560 went sort of from like an atheist queer activist to 0:05:07.680 --> 0:05:11.920 a conservative, evangelical and culture. 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:16.120 Fan and straight Yes that's straight, and so and so 0:05:16.400 --> 0:05:20.039 and so what happened and how did he make sense 0:05:20.040 --> 0:05:22.800 of that, and how did we the rest of us 0:05:23.760 --> 0:05:29.080 interpret that change and his shift as dumbfounding as it 0:05:29.160 --> 0:05:30.000 was sort. 0:05:29.839 --> 0:05:36.880 Of predicted this crazy last decade that we've lived in 0:05:37.520 --> 0:05:41.920 with so much identity shifting. So if I had told you, 0:05:42.040 --> 0:05:43.960 I mean, we live in this bizarre world, right, if 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:46.800 I told you in twenty fourteen Donald Trump would be 0:05:46.880 --> 0:05:52.600 president twice, Miloianopolis would claim to be straight, I mean 0:05:52.600 --> 0:05:55.360 he would you would think I was. I mean, you 0:05:55.400 --> 0:05:57.239 wouldn't invite me on a podcast. 0:05:56.800 --> 0:05:59.039 So as the Cup would vote for Joe Biden. 0:05:58.880 --> 0:06:00.560 Right, yes, exactly. 0:06:01.040 --> 0:06:03.960 So all of these things, and we've lived in this 0:06:04.520 --> 0:06:13.640 very contentious, fascinating in some ways, very disorienting, disorienting shift, 0:06:13.640 --> 0:06:16.799 and people have been shifting in all kinds of ways 0:06:16.800 --> 0:06:21.960 around gender, sexuality, politics, spirituality, and in the seventies. 0:06:21.440 --> 0:06:23.120 Which was the last time that we sort of had 0:06:23.120 --> 0:06:27.160 this massive kind of identity shift happen, and so many 0:06:27.160 --> 0:06:29.320 people sort of looking for answers in a time of 0:06:30.040 --> 0:06:35.240 confusion and social change and political disillusionment. You know, those folks, 0:06:35.240 --> 0:06:37.400 they tended to like go to California or join in 0:06:37.480 --> 0:06:40.760 ashrom And in the last ten years, a lot of 0:06:40.760 --> 0:06:43.839 those changes have been happening behind closed doors. We don't 0:06:43.920 --> 0:06:49.400 leave our apartments, and then we narrate those identity transformations. 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:51.360 We have to narrate it to the rest of the world. 0:06:51.400 --> 0:06:54.560 There's a kind of social medias, yes, So I. 0:06:54.520 --> 0:07:00.479 Think that's sort of where those two threads both of like, well, 0:07:00.839 --> 0:07:03.640 what does it mean to actually change, what does the 0:07:03.760 --> 0:07:07.480 experience feel like for the person going through it? And 0:07:07.520 --> 0:07:13.040 then how do the rest of us celebrate poo pooh 0:07:13.320 --> 0:07:18.120 dismiss those shifts? And we see it, you know, we 0:07:18.160 --> 0:07:21.360 see it most obviously with people who shift their politics, 0:07:21.720 --> 0:07:24.640 where there's a kind of you know, one side which 0:07:24.680 --> 0:07:26.920 is like, well, they've lost their mind, they've gone down 0:07:26.920 --> 0:07:29.360 the rabbit hole. The other side is like they've seen 0:07:29.400 --> 0:07:32.040 the light. Right, So we have these very like knee 0:07:32.120 --> 0:07:37.320 jerk instinctual responses often to how to whether it change 0:07:37.360 --> 0:07:38.559 is like valid or good? 0:07:38.880 --> 0:07:39.080 Right. 0:07:39.120 --> 0:07:42.360 So I was interested in those kinds of sort of 0:07:42.360 --> 0:07:45.320 often knee jerk, not very well thought through responses. 0:07:45.760 --> 0:07:48.320 And I love this and there's I want to get 0:07:48.360 --> 0:07:50.280 into the politics. I want to get into so much 0:07:50.360 --> 0:07:52.800 of this and the stories that you tell in this book. 0:07:53.360 --> 0:07:56.800 But just sticking with process for a second, because I'm 0:07:56.800 --> 0:08:00.040 in the midst of finishing up my third book, and 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:03.440 this one's about my mental health journey, and so I 0:08:03.440 --> 0:08:05.320 love talking to other writers who've done the same. And 0:08:05.360 --> 0:08:07.440 we had susan orlean on, and she and I similarly 0:08:07.440 --> 0:08:10.440 struggled with, like how to write about ourselves because we 0:08:10.840 --> 0:08:14.880 mostly write about the world around us. It's so hard 0:08:15.160 --> 0:08:17.480 to write about myself, especially what I've been through. I've 0:08:17.480 --> 0:08:20.040 really struggled with it. And in this book You've changed, 0:08:20.160 --> 0:08:23.560 you share a lot of your personal stories as well. 0:08:23.600 --> 0:08:27.200 Did you start with the decision to include your own 0:08:27.280 --> 0:08:29.520 stories or did you start out wanting to write about 0:08:30.160 --> 0:08:33.440 around you and then come to the decision to include 0:08:33.480 --> 0:08:36.319 your own pov like talk about your process a little bit. 0:08:36.760 --> 0:08:39.000 Yeah, I think this always happens with me, where I 0:08:39.040 --> 0:08:42.040 have this intention to like, I'm this book's not going 0:08:42.080 --> 0:08:44.040 to be about me. I'm just going to write about it. 0:08:44.040 --> 0:08:45.760 I mean, I've always written about other people, but I 0:08:46.120 --> 0:08:48.960 have ye. In my book sort of the addiction book, 0:08:49.040 --> 0:08:50.640 I ended up writing about myself because I'm like, I 0:08:50.679 --> 0:08:54.440 can't write this book about addiction and pretend that I 0:08:54.480 --> 0:08:56.760 haven't been dealing with these same issues. So, yeah, it 0:08:56.840 --> 0:09:01.720 wasn't actually intentional in that sense. The Dog book that 0:09:01.800 --> 0:09:03.640 was sort of a break. I'm like, I've written about addiction. 0:09:03.720 --> 0:09:05.400 I need to drive around the country with my dog. 0:09:06.160 --> 0:09:08.560 But even that book ended up like I kind of 0:09:08.559 --> 0:09:11.360 fell for this person and there was this drama that happened. 0:09:11.360 --> 0:09:14.120 So that ended up, and I wrote about all my insecurities, 0:09:14.160 --> 0:09:16.760 does my dog love me? All that stuff? So I 0:09:16.840 --> 0:09:19.520 did all that, and then in this book again, yeah, 0:09:19.040 --> 0:09:23.400 the the crux of it was like how do people 0:09:23.800 --> 0:09:25.800 change and how do we interpret it culturally? And how 0:09:25.800 --> 0:09:28.360 can I write about this strange moment that we're living in. 0:09:29.040 --> 0:09:36.400 And then through that process I again ended up being like, wow, 0:09:36.480 --> 0:09:39.120 well I'm trying to change in some interesting ways. I 0:09:39.160 --> 0:09:41.800 am changing in some ways, I'm not changing in others. 0:09:42.600 --> 0:09:45.960 And so where it makes sense in the book, I 0:09:46.080 --> 0:09:49.040 do sort of veer off into these areas and I 0:09:49.080 --> 0:09:52.040 attend to a lot of like change workshops, so I 0:09:52.080 --> 0:09:54.880 write about that kind of experience. I went out to 0:09:55.040 --> 0:09:58.400 Essoln which is there not treatment center, which is this 0:09:58.520 --> 0:10:02.360 nice retreat center California coast, and I went there. I 0:10:02.440 --> 0:10:06.120 ended up writing a lot about my father, who is 0:10:06.160 --> 0:10:09.080 a writer also who's written about change, and I found 0:10:09.080 --> 0:10:12.080 myself just turning into my father. So there's the question of, like, 0:10:13.000 --> 0:10:15.120 you know, we do all these things to control how 0:10:15.160 --> 0:10:18.360 we change, right, We like assume that we're these were 0:10:18.360 --> 0:10:22.800 the master of like our change story, right, and that 0:10:22.840 --> 0:10:24.520 we had to change in all the ways that we want, 0:10:24.559 --> 0:10:26.480 And then you know, but it's much more complicated that 0:10:26.520 --> 0:10:30.959 we change in relationship to people. We change because one 0:10:31.480 --> 0:10:34.360 our tribe has hurt us in some way and we 0:10:34.400 --> 0:10:37.520 need to find a new one. We change, We just 0:10:37.559 --> 0:10:40.199 become our parents without wanting to. So there's a lot 0:10:40.240 --> 0:10:42.760 of ways, and I'm not suggesting that we don't control 0:10:42.800 --> 0:10:45.080 in any ways. Like for me, one of my goals 0:10:45.160 --> 0:10:48.079 was to be much more connected to myself, much more 0:10:48.840 --> 0:10:53.080 vulnerable in relationships, much more open in relationships, a much 0:10:53.120 --> 0:10:55.960 better friend. And so those were like goals that I had, 0:10:56.240 --> 0:10:59.640 which I think i've my friends tell me I'm changed, 0:11:00.040 --> 0:11:02.320 I'm much I'm much better in relationships. So there's ways 0:11:02.360 --> 0:11:04.760 in which I think that I had these goals that 0:11:04.880 --> 0:11:09.199 I wanted to shift. So it ended up again having 0:11:09.640 --> 0:11:12.880 this element of my own story which is always which 0:11:12.920 --> 0:11:14.920 is always a little scary, I'll tell you, but it's 0:11:15.280 --> 0:11:18.000 less it is it's gotten less scary for me now 0:11:18.040 --> 0:11:20.560 that I don't care what other people think so much. Yes, 0:11:20.640 --> 0:11:23.520 so that has shifted from when I wrote my addiction book, 0:11:23.520 --> 0:11:27.320 which was terrifying, to this one. And people have read 0:11:27.360 --> 0:11:30.920 the book saying, oh, you're so vulnerable. I guess yeah, 0:11:31.080 --> 0:11:33.440 I mean there are things that I keep private. I 0:11:33.440 --> 0:11:36.160 mean we don't put everything on the page, right, Yeah, 0:11:36.200 --> 0:11:39.000 that random strangers are not like they don't get to 0:11:39.040 --> 0:11:43.160 get everything about us, right, But it is vulnerable, And 0:11:43.559 --> 0:11:46.000 but I think I'm in a place where I that 0:11:46.080 --> 0:11:46.960 feels less scary. 0:11:47.640 --> 0:11:51.800 My editor was just reading like the latest draft, and 0:11:51.840 --> 0:11:55.440 he's like, you know, in this storytelling of your mental 0:11:55.480 --> 0:11:56.920 health journey, your husband. 0:11:56.720 --> 0:11:59.280 Is perfect in the story. 0:11:59.360 --> 0:12:02.080 And I why you're doing that, right, because this isn't 0:12:02.080 --> 0:12:05.960 about his flaws or his right challenges, right, but like 0:12:06.000 --> 0:12:07.800 you might want to let the reader in a little bit. 0:12:07.880 --> 0:12:10.120 I'm like, maybe he didn't get it right every time. 0:12:10.280 --> 0:12:11.679 So I know what you mean, like we don't we 0:12:11.720 --> 0:12:12.959 don't share everything, but. 0:12:13.120 --> 0:12:17.600 Yeah, yeah, my husband is in this book in various places. 0:12:17.679 --> 0:12:20.319 And yeah, but you know, I'll tell you. Like the 0:12:20.360 --> 0:12:22.720 people as on this theme of like you know, we 0:12:22.760 --> 0:12:24.480 say we don't change for it, we can we shouldn't 0:12:24.520 --> 0:12:27.520 change for other people, right yeah, okay, Like that's true, 0:12:27.559 --> 0:12:29.640 that it's good to change for ourselves, but we change 0:12:29.679 --> 0:12:32.640 for other people all the time. Other people affect us. 0:12:32.720 --> 0:12:35.400 And my husband when I look back at at the 0:12:35.440 --> 0:12:38.240 experience of being with him for the last ten years, 0:12:39.160 --> 0:12:40.840 you know, it's not like he tried to do this, 0:12:40.920 --> 0:12:44.240 but his like relentless. I mean, there's things that he 0:12:44.280 --> 0:12:46.000 would like to change about me, don't get me wrong, 0:12:46.200 --> 0:12:50.280 but his generally his relentless sort of acceptance of me 0:12:51.160 --> 0:12:55.840 as I am, without wanting to change me, like changed me. 0:12:56.040 --> 0:12:59.400 Like right, oh wow, I can be this person can 0:12:59.480 --> 0:13:03.960 accept me me for and even without realizing it, that 0:13:04.160 --> 0:13:08.280 acceptance really like healed something in me. 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:09.600 Of course. 0:13:09.880 --> 0:13:21.640 Oh and that's such a great point. We're going to 0:13:21.679 --> 0:13:22.959 get more into the book, but first I want to 0:13:22.960 --> 0:13:25.480 get to know you a little bit better for our audience. 0:13:26.400 --> 0:13:28.560 I always like to ask what kind of kid were you? 0:13:31.880 --> 0:13:34.160 So I write a little a little bit about this 0:13:34.240 --> 0:13:36.440 in the book. Right, So, I'm I was a kid 0:13:36.480 --> 0:13:38.480 who I grew up in San Francisco, the rare kid 0:13:38.480 --> 0:13:42.560 who grew up like in the city. My parents sort 0:13:42.600 --> 0:13:45.160 of both like progressive San Francisco types. So my mom 0:13:45.240 --> 0:13:50.400 is French, so they divorced when I was seven. I 0:13:50.440 --> 0:13:52.960 would go two weeks to each of their places, which 0:13:53.040 --> 0:13:55.360 was fairly disorienting, and I've talked to them about that 0:13:55.360 --> 0:13:57.640 because they each like my mom was quite strict and 0:13:57.679 --> 0:13:59.160 my dad was like, do whatever you want. And then 0:13:59.200 --> 0:14:02.439 so I had these very diferent sort of expectations. I 0:14:02.640 --> 0:14:07.360 think I was a you know my memories. I remember 0:14:07.400 --> 0:14:09.520 being very happy in middle school. I would just play 0:14:09.559 --> 0:14:12.079 sports with my friends and sort of and then high 0:14:12.120 --> 0:14:16.640 school came and I felt like a lost tourist in 0:14:16.720 --> 0:14:21.320 high school, Like I I think that I was well, 0:14:21.360 --> 0:14:23.680 I wasn't consciously dealing with the fact that I was gay, 0:14:23.720 --> 0:14:29.240 but I think that was underneath it. I felt totally 0:14:30.480 --> 0:14:32.960 I didn't feel cool in the way that I had 0:14:32.960 --> 0:14:36.240 in middle school, and I felt really really insecure, didn't 0:14:36.240 --> 0:14:38.160 know what I was doing. At the same time, I 0:14:38.200 --> 0:14:40.400 like tried to keep busy. I wrote plays for the 0:14:40.480 --> 0:14:44.760 school that the school produced. I played sports, so sort 0:14:44.760 --> 0:14:47.120 of from the outside, if someone was looking in, they 0:14:47.200 --> 0:14:50.080 might have said, oh, this kid hat sort of is 0:14:50.160 --> 0:14:54.360 doing fine. I was not doing fine. I was really 0:14:54.400 --> 0:14:57.800 really insecure, struggling to connect with my parents, unable to 0:14:57.880 --> 0:15:01.600 tell them anything about my fears. Yeah, it was not ideal, 0:15:02.480 --> 0:15:05.960 so but I was always I want I knew I 0:15:05.960 --> 0:15:07.840 wanted to be a writer, and my parents, even as 0:15:07.880 --> 0:15:11.040 they disagreed about most things, really agreed on that. They 0:15:11.080 --> 0:15:15.800 really were incredibly supportive of this idea that I would 0:15:15.800 --> 0:15:17.640 write in some way. And initially I was going to 0:15:17.640 --> 0:15:20.240 be a sports writer, and I then I wanted to 0:15:20.240 --> 0:15:22.520 be a playwright, and then I sort of ended up 0:15:22.520 --> 0:15:26.120 being this magazine long form magazine writer and writing books. 0:15:26.120 --> 0:15:28.800 So I guess the kind of kid I was was 0:15:29.880 --> 0:15:36.000 really compartmentalized and disconnected from my true feelings in a 0:15:36.120 --> 0:15:40.400 truly staggering way. When I look back on it. You know, 0:15:40.560 --> 0:15:44.040 most kids, not most, a lot of young people, especially 0:15:44.040 --> 0:15:46.440 in high school, struggling with their sexuality. It will be 0:15:46.440 --> 0:15:48.640 like WHOA am I gay? Like what does that mean? 0:15:48.680 --> 0:15:50.200 And should I come out? And like what is it? 0:15:50.360 --> 0:15:54.000 You know? But I never even let myself have that thought. 0:15:54.080 --> 0:15:58.560 I was so compartmentalized and in denial. So I think, yeah, 0:15:58.600 --> 0:16:01.800 I think I was compartmental and in denial a lot 0:16:01.880 --> 0:16:02.400 as a kid. 0:16:02.680 --> 0:16:06.360 Were you I relate to this a lot? Were you? 0:16:06.480 --> 0:16:09.920 I know, you went to like a French international school. 0:16:09.960 --> 0:16:12.680 I know you went to Midil. I also went to 0:16:12.680 --> 0:16:14.840 private schools and then a very good Were you like 0:16:14.880 --> 0:16:17.640 a high achiever for most of childhood? 0:16:18.120 --> 0:16:22.040 Yes, though a bit of a slacker too. I was 0:16:22.520 --> 0:16:27.240 a high achiever who in the sense that I did 0:16:27.360 --> 0:16:30.360 like a lot of things, like I edited the paper, 0:16:30.400 --> 0:16:32.440 I wrote plays, I played sports. I was that kind 0:16:32.480 --> 0:16:34.760 of high achiever, and in class I was pretty good 0:16:34.760 --> 0:16:37.480 in the classes that I cared about. Unfortunately, I went 0:16:37.520 --> 0:16:39.520 to as you said, I went to this French American 0:16:39.520 --> 0:16:43.480 school and they made you take math in French and 0:16:43.640 --> 0:16:46.960 in English. So I got bad grades in two classes 0:16:47.720 --> 0:16:51.720 as a post just one. Right, there's this different philosophy 0:16:51.760 --> 0:16:53.800 about like what math is and how we do math, 0:16:53.840 --> 0:16:56.120 so that was frustrating. So I wasn't good at like 0:16:56.200 --> 0:16:58.600 math and like science and stuff like that. But in 0:16:58.680 --> 0:17:06.159 other English street that kind of stuff. I was interested 0:17:06.200 --> 0:17:08.679 in the things I was interested in, and then I 0:17:08.720 --> 0:17:10.399 sort of checked out of like math. 0:17:11.440 --> 0:17:12.600 I feel like whatever. 0:17:12.880 --> 0:17:15.880 Like when you're a high achieving kid for whatever reasons, 0:17:15.880 --> 0:17:20.040 like whatever made you that way, you get really good 0:17:20.040 --> 0:17:23.479 at compartmentalizing because you've just got to push through and 0:17:23.520 --> 0:17:25.919 you don't want everything to collapse, right, So you're just 0:17:25.960 --> 0:17:29.720 trying to keep everything, at least the artifice of everything 0:17:29.920 --> 0:17:33.760 sort of somewhat intact and so, right, you won't connect 0:17:33.920 --> 0:17:37.080 to the way you're really feeling until much much later. 0:17:37.200 --> 0:17:39.639 No connection to the way I was feeling. I mean, really, 0:17:39.640 --> 0:17:43.160 looking back on it, I'm like, how is that possible 0:17:43.160 --> 0:17:45.920 that I was so so, so so disconnected. 0:17:45.400 --> 0:17:48.160 Because you were great at compartmentalizing, yes, and so. 0:17:48.600 --> 0:17:50.920 A big part. And I started to get a little 0:17:50.920 --> 0:17:54.320 bit more connected in college. I sort of, I don't know, 0:17:54.359 --> 0:17:57.840 I felt like I started living again in college me too, 0:17:57.920 --> 0:18:03.720 I came out, you know, so, but then then then 0:18:03.800 --> 0:18:05.879 sort of quickly again, I started to struggle with addiction. 0:18:06.000 --> 0:18:09.680 So it became this this thing. And then since then, 0:18:09.840 --> 0:18:12.200 since my mid twenties, when I realized I was struggling 0:18:12.200 --> 0:18:15.600 with addiction and started this path of Like my dad 0:18:15.640 --> 0:18:19.119 says to me sometimes he goes, you know, in a 0:18:19.119 --> 0:18:21.240 way it's very sweet. He's like, well, I'm really proud 0:18:21.280 --> 0:18:25.800 of like all the things that you've done to try 0:18:25.840 --> 0:18:28.159 to like connect with yourself and sort of get better. 0:18:29.280 --> 0:18:31.679 And when he said that, I was like, oh, I 0:18:31.680 --> 0:18:33.560 guess I have been trying to do that for like 0:18:34.440 --> 0:18:36.560 since I was twenty five and I'm fifty now, so 0:18:37.119 --> 0:18:40.040 you know this this, Yeah, I've been on this kind 0:18:40.080 --> 0:18:45.520 of journey to try to like understand myself and get better. 0:18:45.560 --> 0:18:47.760 And then you know, I write a lot about that 0:18:47.920 --> 0:18:53.640 in this book. I write about that sort of that process, yeah, 0:18:53.720 --> 0:18:56.040 which you know is very confusing. And then you know, 0:18:56.040 --> 0:18:57.560 we get to this point where then we try to 0:18:57.560 --> 0:19:00.639 like say, well, this led to that, and then I 0:19:00.680 --> 0:19:03.199 did this, and it all you know, we try to 0:19:03.200 --> 0:19:05.040 create these narratives. 0:19:04.840 --> 0:19:07.280 Yeah, a hero's journey, and try to create a hero's 0:19:07.359 --> 0:19:10.359 journey so that it all sounds okay to us, right. 0:19:10.480 --> 0:19:13.400 When in reality there's a lot more mystery and uncertainty 0:19:13.720 --> 0:19:16.520 to this than I think. But that's not very satisfying 0:19:16.520 --> 0:19:18.840 to people, this idea that we like that there's going 0:19:18.880 --> 0:19:20.960 to be a mystery and we don't really know why 0:19:21.000 --> 0:19:21.920 we get the way we get. 0:19:22.040 --> 0:19:26.680 So, yes, what kind of writing jobs do you get 0:19:26.800 --> 0:19:28.680 after college? 0:19:29.080 --> 0:19:32.639 So? I, well, I grew up and I was lucky. 0:19:32.680 --> 0:19:37.800 I ended up first going working in a newspaper in 0:19:38.240 --> 0:19:40.960 outside San Francisco. Then I worked at x Y magazine, 0:19:40.960 --> 0:19:43.320 which was this really amazing magazine for young gay men 0:19:43.359 --> 0:19:46.040 in the late nineties early two thousand, it was this 0:19:46.840 --> 0:19:49.040 like back then you could still think you were like 0:19:49.080 --> 0:19:52.520 the only gay kid in Iowa. So this magazine was 0:19:52.600 --> 0:19:56.920 incredibly meaningful. We would have we would have young young 0:19:56.960 --> 0:19:59.000 men all over the country writing us and being like, 0:19:59.000 --> 0:20:01.320 thank god, I found this MA magazine, you know. So 0:20:01.359 --> 0:20:05.600 we felt this like deep responsibility to because we were 0:20:05.640 --> 0:20:08.480 helping a lot of people. And that's where I met Michael, 0:20:08.680 --> 0:20:14.080 who was like, you know, incredibly he inspired so many 0:20:14.280 --> 0:20:16.560 young people. He had a way of connecting and inspiring them. 0:20:16.560 --> 0:20:18.159 And then when he went X gay, everyone was like, 0:20:18.640 --> 0:20:21.480 well they were a lot of the readers were incredibly 0:20:21.840 --> 0:20:25.560 like confused by that and what does that mean? So yeah, 0:20:25.760 --> 0:20:29.760 and then I started writing for sf Weekly, which was 0:20:29.760 --> 0:20:32.240 this weekly, wrote cover stories for them, and then I 0:20:32.280 --> 0:20:35.520 started writing for magazine. So that's sort of my my arc. 0:20:35.560 --> 0:20:38.520 And with magazines, I you know, I love, I loved 0:20:38.560 --> 0:20:43.240 and I still love being able to immerse myself for 0:20:43.320 --> 0:20:47.360 weeks or months inside communities oftentimes of people who were 0:20:47.840 --> 0:20:52.960 unlike me, Yeah, and trying to understand them and write 0:20:52.960 --> 0:20:54.880 about them. So I wrote about I've written a lot 0:20:54.880 --> 0:20:58.600 about teen Christians in my twenties, and that was a 0:20:58.600 --> 0:21:01.000 group that really fascinated me. And I say this a 0:21:01.000 --> 0:21:04.600 lot to my students. I say the fact that I 0:21:04.640 --> 0:21:07.679 have written about and spent so much time with people 0:21:07.880 --> 0:21:12.000 unlike me has been the biggest gifts of my life 0:21:12.119 --> 0:21:16.040 because I just learned that I could connect with people 0:21:17.320 --> 0:21:21.040 even if we disagreed on things, Yeah, in a way 0:21:21.119 --> 0:21:24.560 that some of my friends don't have that feeling because 0:21:24.560 --> 0:21:28.440 they haven't experienced that. Now. I think that Trump era 0:21:28.600 --> 0:21:33.639 has tested this ability to sort of find common ground 0:21:33.680 --> 0:21:36.840 with people that we disagree with it. And that's been 0:21:36.840 --> 0:21:40.560 really disorienting to me because I've always found myself I 0:21:40.600 --> 0:21:43.800 have many conservative Republican friends I have, you know, even 0:21:43.800 --> 0:21:47.960 though I'm not that, and and I've always loved that 0:21:48.160 --> 0:21:52.080 even as we disagreed on things. The last ten years 0:21:52.160 --> 0:21:56.040 has been a test of those kinds of bonds and 0:21:56.640 --> 0:21:59.320 this question of like how we communicate with people who 0:21:59.320 --> 0:22:03.280 are different and really interesting. And I write about Dave 0:22:03.280 --> 0:22:05.800 Fleischer who goes deep canvassing in this book about sort 0:22:05.800 --> 0:22:08.600 of how do we change people's minds? And Dave is 0:22:08.640 --> 0:22:10.880 amazing because he you know people, he'll go to their 0:22:10.880 --> 0:22:13.679 front door, and a conservative we'll say, I'm not going 0:22:13.720 --> 0:22:15.919 to talk to a liberal and then you know, and 0:22:15.960 --> 0:22:18.760 then Dave just charms them and connects with them, and 0:22:18.840 --> 0:22:20.560